THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 12/17/19

 

Imagine one of those ABC After School Specials in which the scripter slowly went insane during the process of writing it. If you can picture that, you'll have a pretty good idea of what it's like to watch the 1985 Canadian children's film THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (Severin Kids).

Michael (Mathew Mackay, LITTLE MEN, THE BOOK OF EVE) is a normal kid who likes to play soccer, and his sister Suzie (Alison Podbrey, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS) is struggling to take over the "Mom" role in the family while their real mom is away. Meanwhile, their eccentric dad Billy (Michael Hogan) is a successful painter working in the attic studio of their home.

When a nearly abandoned house burns, killing some homeless people trapped inside, Michael and his friend Conrad "Connie" Wong (Siluk Saysanasy of "Degrassi High" in a wonderfully likable performance) decide to explore it.

But when Michael goes inside, he sees something so frightening that, after a close-up in which he resembles a pint-sized Yahoo Serious, he goes into shock and then loses all of his hair, turning completely bald. 

So far, this is just like any other kids' show you might've tuned in to watch after school back in the 80s, and it might've even had Scott Baio in it. But when the ghosts of two dead "winos" appear to Michael in the dead of night and share with him a secret formula for restoring his hair (one involving, as you might guess, peanut butter), then that's when we fear the writer has started going progressively coo-coo.

Actually, a group of writers worked on the script, which takes us through Michael's painful first day back at school as a "baldy", effectively portraying a kind of emotional turmoil that most kids can identify with. His family and faithful friend Connie are shown trying to comfort the stricken lad, each in his or her quirky way, but to no avail.

Then Michael becomes even more of a freakish outsider when, after using too much peanut butter in the solution, his hair begins to grow at an alarming rate--several feet per hour, in fact--which is depicted in such bizarre terms that the film begins to take on much the same feel as iconic surrealist Fernando Arrabal's only children's film, THE EMPEROR OF PERU.

(I'm not even going to mention that part where Connie tries out the hair-growing solution on his...err, never mind. Suffice it to say, it's something you don't expect in your standard kids' film.)

With six feet or so of hair trailing behind him, Michael can't even walk to school without the wind twisting his flowing mane around a nearby hedge. It's here that he is kidnapped by the villain of the story, taken to a hidden location where there are several other recently abducted children, and made part of an insidious plot that's like something out of Ian Fleming during a flush of fevered imagination.

The story by this time has made a determined foray right into mind-bending fantasy territory to such an extent that it should delight both children and likeminded adults.

This involves magical paintings that one can enter, rendered with magical paintbrushes made from human hair (guess whose), and is all presided over by Michel Maillot as the delightfully sinister Signor Sergio, a frustrated artist recently fired from his teaching position at Michael's school for being, well, too damn weird.

Mathew Mackay and Alison Podbrey do a fine job as a relatably normal brother and sister, while Siluk Saysanasy often steals the show as Connie. Connie's own little sister Mai Ling (cute-as-a-button Nadka Takahataki) shows up as one of the kidnapped children.  The adult members of the cast are equally good, with special honors going to Maillot as The Signor.

Severin Films' new kids label, Severin Kids, is well-served by this good-looking entry which is both subtitled and closed-captioned with mono English sound.  Severin's usual well-stocked bonus menu includes an extended U.S. theatrical release version with extra footage, an easygoing commentary with producer Rock Demers and actor Mathew Mackay, a seperate interview with Demers, an interview with Siluck Saysanasy, a look at Canadian kids' films, and both Canadian and U.S. trailers. The Blu-ray's cover art is reversible.

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION is just the sort of kids' entertainment that places young viewers into a recognizable environment before taking a wondrously entrancing detour into the surreal.  I wish I'd been able to see it as a child, although my current inner child had a fantastic time.

Special Features:

    Extended U.S. Theatrical Release Version
    New Commentary with Producer Rock Demers and Actor Matthew MacKay, Moderated by Filmmaker Ara Ball
    Human Beings Are The Same All Over: An Interview with Producer Rock Demers
    Conrad’s Peanut Butter Solution: An Interview with Siluck Saysanasy
    Tales for All: Paul Corupe on Rock Demers and the Canadian Kids Film
    Canadian Trailer
    Original U.S. Trailer
    Reversible cover

Alternate cover art:

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

BANG BANG BABY -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 11/4/15

It's nice to see a low-budget project in which talent and ambition combine to create something impressive.  With BANG BANG BABY (2014), first-time writer and director Jeffrey St. Jules and company have done just that, and it couldn't have been easy to create a candy-coated 60s musical that takes place inside a surreal, sci-fi/horror nightmare.

Our heroine, Stepphy (Jane Levy, EVIL DEAD remake), wonders at one point if she is indeed living in a nightmare, but before that she's a bright, starry-eyed young girl who wants to win a talent contest and become a singing star--preferably, one who sings duets with her heartthrob, rock-and-roll dreamboat Bobby Shore (Justin Chatwin, Tom Cruise's son in WAR OF THE WORLDS).

Stepphy wins an audition in New York, but her widowed, alcoholic dad, George (Peter Stormare, FARGO, ARMAGEDDON) won't let her go because he's sick and lonely, and knows enough about the music business to be extremely pessimistic about her chances.  She's crushed until fate steps in--while out walking one night, Stepphy meets Bobby Shore and his manager, Helmut, whose car has broken down, and invites them back to her house. 

Stepphy and Bobby fall in love.  Bobby cooks up a plan to open up a casino and performance theater in town, so that he and Stepphy can sing together and she won't have to leave George on his own.  Everything seems to be heading toward a storybook perfect, happily-ever-after ending.  

That's the candy-coated part, and up till now BANG BANG BABY seems spun from the same cotton candy machine that John Waters' HAIRSPRAY swirled out of.  Sweet-voiced Jane Levy not only sings like a bird but is wonderfully chipper as Stepphy, while Justin Chatwin does a peppermint-smooth take on the dulcet-voiced, pompadored early-60s rock-and-roll idol.

The film's whimsical art design is like a series of colorful comic book panels, cartoony and artificial, although the perpetually subdued lighting seems to hint at something dark below the surface. 

Indeed, the sci-fi/horror elements have been lurking in the shadows all along, ever since Stepphy's creepy admirer Fabian (David Reale, CHLOE, ONE WEEK) took advantage of her drunken state one night while parked next to the toxic chemical plant that he runs, which, incidentally, is leaking clouds of mutation-inducing gas that will eventually infect the entire town in grotesque ways. (Stepphy herself, it turns out, has been "infected" in more ways than one.)
 
What transpires after that is a dazzling synthesis of clashing sensibilities in which the breezy smalltown musical finds itself veering straight through ERASERHEAD territory, complete with a bleak, joyless marriage and a horrifically strange baby. 

The script flits nimbly between surreal comedy and utter tragedy--there's even a mass suicide when the infected townspeople can't bear what they're turning into any longer--while always maintaining just the right balance to give the film a pleasing fantasy ambience to the very end. 

Even the relatively small budget works to give things more of an unreal feeling.  At night we sense the darkened soundstage, as when Stepphy and Bobby serenade each other in her astro-turfed backyard, and in daytime scenes we notice a fake background scrolling past like something out of "The Flintstones."  The inherent fantasy of the musical form allows the director to lure us into a feverish dream world which will continuously turn bizarre and nightmarish.

But what really makes BANG BANG BABY work, aside from the truly compelling story and quirky visual appeal, are the great songs and music, especially Jane Levy's exquisite opening number and the catchy title tune.  These "Hit Parade"-type songs alternate with rock opera to carry the plot through a world that is wonderfully weird, yet somehow down to earth enough for us to relate to it. 


Official Trailer

BANG BANG BABY -- Movie Review by Porfle

A CURE FOR WELLNESS -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

 

 

Originally posted on 6/6/17

 

 

Every once in a while a movie comes along that you can just delve into, like a pool of water, and float around in for awhile.  A CURE FOR WELLNESS (20th Century Fox, 2017) has a lot to do with water, with its theraputic baths, isolation tanks, humid steam rooms, and dark, murky depths creepy-crawling with slithering eels and even more horrific things.  After delving into this inky nightmare, you may come out feeling a little waterlogged. 

The setting is a sprawling mountainside "wellness retreat" in Austria where people go for the waters, but rarely come back.  (We discover later that it has a particularly sordid past.)  Pembroke has fled there to escape prosecution in a big Wall Street scam, so ambitious junior exec Lockhart (Dane DeHaan, CHRONICLE, LAWLESS), himself under threat of prison time, has been sent to retrieve the older man in order for him to serve as the company's official scapegoat. 

When we meet him, we see that young Lockhart is just a hair's breadth away from forever losing his own soul to his work. A shred of decency still surfaces from time to time, as when he visits his ailing mother in a nursing home or dwells on the memory of the day his father, himself mired in a similar scandal, committed suicide before his eyes. 

 

He's all business when the hospital staff give him the runaround about Pembroke, yet a shocking accident leaves him stunned, confused, and helpless, his broken leg encased in a cast and his fate in the hands of quiet but firmly authoritative Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs). 

Barely mobile on a pair of crutches, a woozy Lockhart finally manages to locate Pembroke but the mystery of Dr. Volmer and the wellness center has only begun to draw him inexorably into a nightmare of horror that will reach epic proportions. 

As Lockhart, Dane DeHaan carries on the troubled, introspective persona that worked so well in CHRONICLE but with an added assertiveness which helps him survive the series of traumatic events to come.  Jason Isaacs, whose range extends from strutting martinet (SOLDIER) to manly good-guy type ("Case Histories"), flexes his talents as the outwardly calm, vaguely sinister Dr. Volmer.

Also on hand is the aptly-named Mia Goth (EVEREST, THE SURVIVALIST) as Hannah, the clinic's only young patient, who fascinates Lockhart with a beauty and a demeanor which are both strangely ethereal.  Unable to recall her own past and seemingly out of place in her own time, she presents Lockhart with an added incentive to get to the bottom of the ghastly events taking place in the dungeon-like bowels of the retreat where patients are taken, never to return.

I'm loathe to reveal more, save to say that A CURE FOR WELLNESS is like an intoxicating therapeutic bath in undiluted Goth that immerses the viewer in a tantalizing mystery wrapped in surrealism, horror, and even an element or two of the classic monster movie. 

All of which is presented by director Gore Verbinski (THE RING, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, THE LONE RANGER) in visual terms so imaginative and cinematically splendid that almost every shot could qualify as an entry in an avant-garde photography competition. 

The wellness clinic setting alone is a marvel of production design with its retro, late 19th/early-20th-century look and hissing, sweating, almost steampunk iron-and-rivets technology cloaked beneath the outer beauty of the colorful mountainside. 

Names such as David Lynch, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, and others kept going through my mind as I watched, taking much pleasure in the visuals even as the story recalls hints of Stoker, Lovecraft, and Poe. 

Indeed, Lockhart's arrival at the wellness center early in the film is similar to Renfield entering Dracula's castle in DRACULA.  Both are men on a mission who arrive sane, and then, after encountering vampires in either the figurative or literal sense, find themselves inescapably lost in a hellish madness.  Both films are equally fun to watch, but A CURE FOR WELLNESS is like a darkly scenic rollercoaster ride through a vast carnival spook house. 


Digital HD, Blu-ray & DVD Special Features Include
.    Deleted Sequence: “It’s Wonderful Here”
.    Meditations
.    Water is the Cure
.    Air is the Cure
.    Earth is the Cure
.    The Score
.    Trailers
.    Theatrical trailer
.    Red Band trailer

.    International trailer

.    Digital download

A CURE FOR WELLNESS Disc Specifications
Street Date:         June 6, 2017
Prebook Date:    May 3, 2017
Screen Format:     Widescreen 16:9 (1.78:1)
Audio:         English 7.1 DTS-HD-MA / Spanish 5.1 DD / French 5.1 DD (Blu-ray)
English 5.1 DD / Spanish 2.0 Surround DD / French 2.0 Surround DD (DVD)
Subtitles:        English / French / Spanish (Blu-ray & DVD)
Total Run Time:    Approximately 146 minutes
Rating:        R
Closed Captioned:     Yes

Watch the Trailer:

A CURE FOR WELLNESS -- Blu-ray/DVD Review by Porfle

FATHER'S DAY -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/24/12

 

I didn't know quite what to expect when I started watching FATHER'S DAY (2011), a condition which persisted throughout the entire movie.  Just when you think you've pretty much figured out what it is you're watching, it turns into something a whole lot weirder and several times nuttier.

Written, directed, and starred in by a group of Winnipeg filmmakers who call themselves Astron-6, it's an unashamedly stupid, gore-drenched grab bag of tongue-in-cheek tough-guy action-horror-comedy antics done in the fake-grindhouse style of PLANET TERROR, but with real grindhouse production values and attitude. 

Most nostalgic of all for me, it's presented as though home-taped sometime during the 80s off a late-night cable station called ASTR-TV, complete with promo bumpers, smarmy announcer, and a mid-movie faux trailer for something really, really cheesy called STAR RAIDERS.

The story begins in semi-sane fashion with corpulent "Father's Day Killer" Chris Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdock) raping and butchering dads, including that of gay street hustler Twink (Conor Sweeney).  This repellent character also killed the father of young Ahab and cut out his right eye in the bargain. 

Now grown up, Ahab (Adam Brooks) is a growly-voiced, eye-patched "Snake Plissken" type out for revenge along with his stripper sister Chelsea (Amy Groening), the addlebrained Twink, and a jittery young priest named Father John (Matthew Kennedy) whose blind, aging mentor also met a horrific Fuchman-related fate. 

What follows makes ARMY OF DARKNESS look like a Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy as this simple revenge flick gets progressively more absurd.  Characters obsess "Monty Python"-style over simple figures of speech, as when Ahab tells Father John that it's time to harvest his maple syrup before it turns bitter and Father John wrongly interprets this as a metaphor for Ahab and his sister Chelsea, after which a confused Ahab spends five minutes trying to figure out why Father John just compared him to a tree.

Twink, meanwhile, begins the film as a deceptively serious character grieving over his dead dad (Billy Sadoo's acting while being murdered by Fuchman is strikingly realistic), making his descent into extreme goofiness even more pronounced.  Elsewhere, Father John's odyssey takes him from a meltdown in the pulpit worthy of Richard Burton on laughing gas (in a scene which may have been inspired by the opening to NIGHT OF THE IGUANA) to a hostage situation in Heaven with the desperate priest holding God (Troma head honcho Lloyd Kaufman) at gunpoint. 

While all this is going on, Fuchman continues his reign of terror complete with a cornucopia of wet 'n' wild gore effects including entrails, exploding heads, and one shocking moment that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "eat me."  None of this, however, is quite as disturbing as the image of a full-on naked Mackenzie Murdock displaying his eye-watering genitalia and humping everyone in sight. 

Just when you think our heroes have defeated the bad guy and made everything right with the world again, FATHER'S DAY pulls out all the stops and goes totally off the deep end with Ahab, Twink, and Father John descending into Hell to rescue Chelsea, who's been kidnapped by Fuchman to be the bearer of his evil seed or whatever. 

While this may sound pretty horrible, it's all basically just an excuse to ramp up the bizarre off-the-wall comedy to even greater heights (or should I say depths) of calculated idiocy.  Along with even more squishy gore effects, of course.  Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention the extreme incest sequence and the buxom, chainsaw-wielding stripper played by my future wife, Zsuzsi. 

As nastily nostalgic as the more expensive, star-studded PLANET TERROR and packed with more grindhouse-verite' style than HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, the gleefully horrendous FATHER'S DAY will be a riotous romp for some, a nauseating nightmare for others.  You probably know which camp you're in by now. 


Our coverage of the film's premiere

Official website

FATHER'S DAY -- Movie Review by Porfle

WE ARE THE FLESH -- Movie Review by Porfle

(Originally posted in 2017)

 

Sometimes you finish watching a movie and think, "Well, that was weird."  With WE ARE THE FLESH (2016), you may find yourself saying that after every scene.  Maybe even every single thing that happens in every scene.

The premise is simple--a very strange and twisted man named Mariano (Noé Hernández in gleefully-crazed mode) is up to something very strange and twisted in an abandoned building, and when homeless brother and sister Lucio (Diego Gamaliel) and Maria (Maria Evoli) enter the building seeking food and shelter, they enter into Mariano's world.  What follows is complete and utter madness.

Mariano's madness is expressed verbally through his incessant wild-eyed philosophizing, which lays bare the inner roilings of his squirming id.  Since philosophy and madness can be an unsettling combination, this alone is enough to leave us reeling. 

Fueled by endless exuberance and made manifest with a manic industriousness--in which he forces his two unwilling charges to participate--the result is a nightmare of horror and perversion limited only by a wholly unfettered imagination.

What follows is a dizzying cinematic freefall into the most extreme depths of depravity in which such things as incest and necrophilia are only the start.  This is filmmaking on a subconscious level, with no limits or boundaries. 

The abundant amounts of sex and violence are both graphic and grotesque.  In fact, once this film gets cranked up, very little occurs that isn't shockingly, disturbingly grotesque. 

 

Needless to say, this film is not--I repeat, NOT--for everyone.

Eventually I reached a point where I stopped trying to evaluate WE ARE THE FLESH on a technical level--that this is writer-director Emiliano Rocha Minter's first feature film is something of an artistic marvel--and just found myself trying to endure it.  Most of it is very hard to get through, and I couldn't wait for several of the scenes to end. 

Comparisons to other filmmakers come to mind.  I kept being reminded of the work of Spanish surrealist Fernando Arrabal, whose images are similarly outlandish and disturbing, and that of David Lynch during his willfully strange ERASERHEAD days. 

The joyful reveling in the grotesque also reminded me of PINK FLAMINGOS-era John Waters, while some of the imagery that's just plain out-there seems like it could've been conceived by a deranged Stanley Kubrick tripping his head off on LSD. 



Much of the story takes place within a giant fabricated womb, writhing with naked bodies caked in blood and filth and engaged in acts so degrading as to give even the most jaded viewer second thoughts about whether or not they should even be watching.  I began to seriously question if doing so could by any stretch of the imagination be described as "entertainment." 

So there you have it.  WE ARE THE FLESH, whatever else it may be, is a stunningly effective descent into the underbelly of cinema which, depending on your individual tastes, tolerances, and/or convictions, has the power to either rivet or repel. 

As for me personally, I didn't enjoy it, but I don't think I was supposed to.  And I'm a little relieved that I didn't.

 

Spanish w/ English subtitles / 80 minutes / 1.85:1

Los Angeles Theatrical Release:
Friday, January 13, 2017
Laemmle's Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
8556 Wilshire Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

This title will be released on Blu-ray and DVD February 14, 2017

WE ARE THE FLESH -- Movie Review by Porfle

THEATER OF MR. & MRS. KABAL -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 4/29/17

 

Walerian Borowczyk was a Polish avant-garde artist who chose film as one medium through which to express his wildly imaginative musings.  In 1967, he tackled the art of animation with the feature-length cartoon THEATER OF MR. & MRS. KABAL, aka "Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal" (Olive Films).

Or perhaps "tackled" isn't the correct term as much as "drugged, wrestled into submission, and dressed up funny."

With what appears to be a mix of cel art, cutouts, and other elements (at times it looks as though Borowczyk is drawing directly onto white paper in increments), he tells the story of a day in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal--he a short, mousey husband and she a tall, grotesque wife who appears to be a soulless mechanical monster of some kind.

The first scene catches her in the midst of assembling herself out of spare parts and choosing a head (after many tries, she picks the most alarming-looking one) before going along her un-merry way into what passes for a narrative, which actually isn't one at all.

Mr. Kabal, meanwhile, whiles away his spare time gazing around at the barren scenery through his telescoping binoculars until he catches brief glimpses of live-action women lounging in bikinis who are then menaced by an old man with a beard. These clips are the only color in this stark pen-and-ink world save for a few splashes here and there, including the ever-present butterflies flying endlessly about.

One sequence features the couple lying on the ground (he reading a newspaper, she lying face down) while the butterflies flit by for several minutes.  Some flutter, some flap, and others sound like trash can lids rolling by.

 

Borowczyk has a field day with the sound design throughout the film, as Mrs. Kabal foreshadows "Star Wars" robot C3PO with her staccato speech consisting of a barrage of electronic beeping noises. 

Borowczyk himself appears early on and urges her to simply act naturally (relatively speaking) so that we can observe the Kabals going through a typical day.  She beeps furiously in response (her dialogue is subtitled in three languages) before conjuring a weight out of thin air to drop on Borowczyk's head. 

The early scenes are the best, because they're slower paced and we can better assimilate what's going on, as nonsensical as it is, such as Mrs. Kabal shedding her outer metal husk in order to bath in the ocean, or Mr. Kabal attending a cinema show entitled "The Depths of the Human Body" which features live-action closeups of pulsating organs and a quivering esophagus.

In another scene, a giant crosscut saw separates Mrs. Kabal's head from her reclining body, which then expands to such great size that Mr. Kabal immediately scampers inside to explore the depths of its Escher-like interior.

As the film progresses, so does the pace, until we're assailed by a dizzying procession of utterly bizarre and senseless images that grow more relentlessly incomprehensible by the minute.  Finally the story is nothing more than pure stream-of-consciousness incongruity, and the effort to take it all in becomes rather taxing. 

For this reason it may be advisable to watch THEATER OF MR. & MRS. KABAL in several short bursts rather than trying to handle it all in one mind-numbing sitting.  The more adventurous cineastes among us may consider the latter something of a challenge, while others will be both unable and unwilling to endure more than a few minutes of it.

One thing's for sure--I would be very surprised if Terry Gilliam, who supplied the celebrated animations for "Monty Python" throughout his tenure with the group, weren't at some time influenced by Borowczyk's work, just as the Polish artist's later live-action film GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE seems to foreshadow the early stylings of David Lynch.   

The story of the Kabals is similar to GOTO in its arbitrary and thoroughly unapologetic strangeness for its own sake (or, rather, for art's sake).  But unlike that film with its more coherent plot and less rampant surrealism, the almost hallucinatory THEATER OF MR. & MRS. KABAL remains in the uppermost stratosphere of strangeness from beginning to end, like the long, fervid dream of a rarebit fiend, and dares us to still be there when it's finally done.

Tech Specs
Regional Code: region 1
Languages: French
Subtitles: English (optional)
Video: 1.33:1 aspect ratio; b&w + color
Runtime: 78 minutes
Bonus features: none

THEATER OF MR. & MRS. KABAL -- DVD Review by Porfle

GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/29/17

 

Polish artist Walerian Borowczyk began his film career with bizarre animated shorts and features, then applied his unique artistic sensibilities to live-action film with the amazing GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE, aka "Goto, l'île d'amour" (Olive Films, 1969).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this film was one of David Lynch's influences when he conceived his cult classic ERASERHEAD.  While GOTO isn't as overtly surreal as Lynch's work, it's so unremittingly odd, pictorially beautiful (in a perverse way, despite being a stark study in ugliness and decay), and meticulously rendered in gorgeous, finely-etched black-and-white that it exudes an almost intoxicating dreamlike quality during each moment it's on the screen.

Goto is an island where, due to some natural catastrophe, 90% of the population has been wiped out and the survivors exist in an almost primitive state in which they must make do with the crumbling remnants of their former civilization.  The people are governed by a military dictator named Goto (Pierre Brasseur) and live in the walled ruins of a fortress which, in better days, would have been condemned and demolished.

The story is fairly simple.  Petty criminal Grozo (Guy Saint-Jean) is pardoned by Goto and given three important responsibilities--taking care of Goto's beloved dogs, shining his and his beautiful wife Glossia's boots (a task Grozo savors since he's desperately in love with Glossia), and killing flies via several elaborate fly traps that he distributes daily around the heavily-infested fortress. 

Complications arise when Grozo discovers that Glossia (Ligia Branice) is having an affair with her horseback riding instructor, Gono (Jean-Pierre Andréani), with whom she plans to escape the island in a rowboat.  Grozo then puts his cunning little criminal mind to work to hatch a plan that will somehow rid him of both Goto and Gono so that he can weasel his way into the good graces of the henceforth unattainable Queen. 

While the story is an engaging one, what fascinates us about GOTO is the way Borowczyk executes it all as an artist creating a work of cinematic beauty out of the ordinary and at times repellant, the way a sculptor might use a scrap metal heap as raw material in welding together a makeshift masterpiece.
 

 

Each scene is filmed in formal, proscenium-arch wide shots dotted with cartoonishly-edited inserts, some in startling full color for emphasis (as when Grozo fantasizes about Glossia's boots or feeds the dogs luxuriously bloody hunks of raw meat).  Stark lighting eliminates all shadows, giving everything a blanched, almost too-real look.  Yet even without the shadows and wild camera angles, the visuals are somewhat reminiscent of German expressionism. 

Paint-peeling ruin and crumbling brick walls are the eternal backdrop of these people's lives, brightened only by rare artifacts which survived the catastrophe.  Scraps of fine clothing and other items are bartered for goods and services, even in the island's brothel where no money changes hands. 

The prostitutes are seen bathing communally in a nude scene quite titillating for 1969, as Grozo indulges himself while dreaming that he is with Glossia. They, along with some lovely shots of horses and a visit to the seaside (the boundary of Glossia's prison from which she yearns to escape), are the only respite from the film's grim tableaux of stagnant despair.

 

Inhabiting this world are characters all of whom are either rumpled military buffoons or destitute peasants risking extreme penalties (including the guillotine) to pilfer rotting apples that have fallen from the Governor's trees. Grozo himself is an engaging though ratlike little anti-hero, Glossia a flawed diamond in the roughest rough.  Even Goto has enough good qualities for us to empathize with him as more than just a tinhorn tyrant.  

Fortunately, GOTO isn't as depressing as it sounds since Borowczyk's bone-dry, deadpan sense of humor and keen mastery of the absurd keep us engaged in the most delightful and darkly enchanting ways throughout this otherwise hopelessly bleak tale. 

At times it's as though we're seeing the kind of distressingly odd world that illustrator John Tenniel created for "Alice in Wonderland" come to life, as strange and inescapable as a nightmare yet perversely compelling as well.

The DVD from Olive Films has an aspect ratio of l.66:1 with mono French sound and English subtitles.  Extras consist of the film's trailer, an introduction by artist and Turner Prize nominee Craigle Horsfield, and the lengthy featurette "The Concentration Universe: Goto, Isle of Love" featuring interviews with actor Jean-Pierre Andréani ("Gono") and several key crewmembers from the film.

GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE never fully engages us emotionally--it's just too odd, in both wonderful yet strangely off-putting ways--but we care when the story takes a classically tragic turn and ends on a haunting note.  Most of all, however, I enjoyed it as a stunning work of pure, joyful cinematic art.  Watching it is like creeping through a nightmare gallery in which the artist's fevered subconscious visions have achieved crude substance.

GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE -- DVD Review by Porfle

MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964) -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

 Originally posted on 5/19/21

 

Currently re-watching: MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964), the predictably meat-headed sequel to 1963's raucous romp BEACH PARTY. As the title suggests, it's the same frothy free-for-all only this time with muscles.

The muscles are supplied by a group of strongmen led by Jack Fanny (Don Rickles in a spoof of gym maven Vic Tanny), whose star beefcake, Flex Martian, is played by "Mission: Impossible" and "Police Squad!" regular Peter Lupus under the name "Rock Stevens."

Spoiled rich girl Julie (Italian beauty Luciana Paluzzi, later to play evil Fiona Volpe in the James Bond epic THUNDERBALL) spots Flex from her nearby yacht, is impulsively smitten, and orders her obsequious business manager S.Z. (Buddy Hackett) to purchase the entire strongman squad from Jack Fanny. Deals are made, contracts are signed, and then...

 

...fickle Julie falls in love with Frankie, breaking Flex's heart and igniting the usual jealous tiff between Frankie and girlfriend Annette that will have them at odds for the rest of the movie.

All of this is set against the same milieu as the previous film, with a bunch of vacationing teens living in ramshackle beach houses and springing into action with every fervent cry of "Surf's up!"

Returning are John Ashley as handsome smoothie Johnny, Jody McCrea as the brain-dead Deadhead, Candy Johnson as dancing dervish Candy, and various other somewhat familiar faces amongst the bikini-clad beach bums. 

 

Cute blonde Valora Noland's character name has been changed here from "Rhonda" to "Animal" (she would later pop up in John Wayne's THE WAR WAGON and the "Patterns of Force" episode of "Star Trek"). Also on hand once again are guitar-twanging Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, and Morey Amsterdam as kooky club owner, Cappy.

Chipper pop singer Donna Loren makes her debut in the series along with burgeoning superstar Little Stevie Wonder singing "Happy Street." (He'll share the marathon closing credits with Candy.) Future "Grizzly Adams" star Dan Haggerty, sans beard and long hair, is unrecognizable as one of the strongmen, Biff.

Conspicuous by their absence this time are Harvey Lembeck's Eric Von Zipper and his cycle stupids, although one female member, Alberta Nelson, returns as part of the Jack Fanny camp. 

Annette's hair-trigger jealousy and constant pressure on free-spirited Frankie to settle down and get married are just as tiresome as ever.

Still, the bickering lovebirds each get to croon a few pleasantly sappy love songs, with Frankie also delivering a real ear-bending banger in Cappy's club that gets the joint rocking.

Dick Dale proves that he and the Del-Tones are much better suited to cool surf-rock instrumentals when their attempts at lyrics about the surfing life evoke deep, rumbling groans. 

 

There's no fast-paced, colorful chase sequence this time, but the cartoony action of a no-holds-barred brawl between surfers and strongmen in Cappy's club sorta makes up for it.

This is topped off by an appearance by none other than the great Peter Lorre, who, along with Vincent Price (BEACH PARTY) and Boris Karloff (BIKINI BEACH), was currently under contract with American-International.

Semi-serious scenes (the gang rejects Frankie when he announces he's hooking up with sugar-mama Julie) clash with the unabashedly cartoony and often surreal  nonsense that makes up the bulk of the film, all leavened with heaps of bad rock and roll (some co-written by Brian Wilson) and numerous old school comics adding their seasoned silliness to the usual youthful antics to make MUSCLE BEACH PARTY a dizzyingly dumb distraction for the easily amused.

 

(Note: this is the one that my big brother and his friends were going to see at the theater and I wanted to go but he wouldn't take me with him, so I started crying and Mom made him take me. It was the classic case where Mrs. Cleaver made Wally and Eddie take Beaver to the movies with them. So I got to see "Muscle Beach Party" at the theater when it came out and had a wonderful time!)

MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964) -- Movie Review by Porfle

SICK NURSES -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

(This review has appeared online in 2007 and again in 2012.)


SICK NURSES (2007) is a mind-boggling horror flick from Thailand that plays around with all those Asian ghost-story cliches and offers some of the most flabbergasting, over-the-top death scenes I've seen in quite a while.  It's a wickedly fun tale of revenge, summed up pretty well by Michael Madsen's "Budd" in KILL BILL:  "That woman deserves her revenge...and we deserve to die."  But Budd got off easy in that movie, because if he'd been in this one, he would've ended up worse off than Paula Schultz.

Dr. Tar (Wichan Jarujinda) is a celebrated young doctor who's engaged to the lovely nurse Tahwaan (Chon Wachananon).  But when she catches him fooling around with another nurse--her own sister, Nook (Chidjan Rujiphun)--she goes ballistic and threatens to expose the dirty secret that he sells bodies on the side.  As the rest of the nurses hold Tahwaan down, one of them stabs her to death.  Exactly seven days later, right before midnight, the ghost of Tahwaan returns to the hospital to wreak bloody vengeance upon Dr. Tar and the other nurses. 

This is one weird, gory, surrealistic movie.  Tahwaan's ghost is jet-black with piercing eyes and long, long black hair, which she uses for all sorts of fun things like cocooning people or hanging them from the ceiling.  And that's just for starters.  She can also turn your arms and hands black and take control of them, causing you do commit grave and usually very ironic injury to yourself.  A bulemic nurse who spends most of her time binging and purging ends up stuffing herself with some extremely unhealthy items until her jaw-dropping demise, while a couple of cute twins who deeply admire one another's beauty are eventually compelled to lay into each other with hacksaws.  As for Nook, who is pregnant with Dr. Tar's child...well, you can imagine her ironic fate.

The setting is what must be the emptiest hospital since HALLOWEEN II--there isn't a patient in sight--and the nurses all seem to have their own private, girly bedrooms and don't ever actually do anything except scamper around in sexy uniforms.  It's more like a big giddy sorority house run by SCTV's Johnny LaRue than a hospital.  This doesn't matter, though, because once the terror begins, logic would just get in the way.

At first it seems as though there's barely any story at all, but little scraps of the narrative fall into place along the way, mostly in flashbacks, to make things interesting between bursts of bloody horror.  And there's an awesome twist ending which, I must admit, I didn't see coming at all.  It doesn't make total sense, but that's one of the endearing things about this movie--it's so freakishly entertaining that it doesn't have to.

The simple premise is similar to dozens of killer-on-the-loose borefests we've sat through over the years, but here, lots of visual style and a truly imaginative sense of the bizarre set it apart.  SICK NURSES benefits from an enthusiastic young cast (composed mainly of lovely young ladies), impressive gore effects with a minimum of bad CGI, and an attitude that's as gleefully sick as those titular nurses.

SICK NURSES -- Movie Review by Porfle

SURVEILLANCE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 8/17/09

 

Jennifer Lynch may not have quite as bizarre a visual sense as her dad, but as far as being able to write and direct a mindbending and deliriously fun movie goes, the acorn didn't fall very far from the tree. Weird as it may seem to describe such a shocking and gory film as "fun", I had a great time watching SURVEILLANCE (2008) twist and turn its way through a constantly surprising storyline to its demented end.

Two visiting FBI agents, Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) are summoned to a smalltown police station to help clear up a multiple murder which occurred on a desolate stretch of highway. Three interrogation rooms are set up with Hallaway manning the surveillance monitors. Bloody, battered Officer Bennet (Kent Harper), injured in the attack and extremely distraught over the death of his partner Jim Conrad (French Stewart), is a hostile witness who is obviously hiding something. Bobbi (Pell James), a young blonde dopehead, struggles to give a lucid account to a couple of jeering cops. Meanwhile, Anderson tries to coax the story out of Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins), a quietly observant little girl who may be the only key to the truth.

The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace and takes its time piecing together flashbacks of what happened from the three disparate perspectives. The two bad-boy cops, Bennet and Conrad, enjoy shooting out tires and terrorizing innocent passersby. A couple of fun-loving hopheads, Bobbi and her boyfriend Johnny (Mac Miller) are out joyriding and getting high. Meanwhile, a station wagon contains a vacation-bound family that includes Mom (Cheri Oteri), stepdad (Hugh Dillon), brother Curtis (Kyle Briere), and little Stephanie. When the druggie couple and the family become the latest victims in Bennet and Conrad's "good cop/bad cop" routine, the terror is just getting started--little do any of them know that two insane, bloodthirsty serial killers, whom we've already seen committing a horrifying home invasion, are on the highway as well, and they're all headed for a catastrophic collision.

The smalltown police station where the interrogations occur is the sort of place where David Lynch might have put fish in the coffee pots, but daughter Jennifer relies on a slowly building air of tension, suspicion, and unease to keep us on edge. There's a definite mistrust and resentment between the cops and the FBI agents that we know can't be good. Officer Bennet, in particular, seems ready to go postal at any moment as the ghastly events on the highway keep churning through his unstable mind. Bobbi has trouble convincing the two inept cops questioning her of anything besides the fact that she's a drugged-out ditz. The only person who seems capable of shedding any light on the matter is Stephanie, the little girl with a knack for noticing things other people miss. Ryan Simpkins is a naturally talented child actress who gives the role a haunting quality.

I wish I could say more about the plot but that would be giving away too much. Suffice it to say that there are two major sequences--both explosively violent, gory, and shocking--in which the fertilizer hits the ventilator in a big way. The first takes place out on that desolate highway after the two cops' terrorization of the hapless civilians is finally over and everyone's catching their breath, when suddenly... Metal rends, glass shatters, blood splatters, and people die in really bad ways. Fetchingly cute SNL alum Cheri Oteri is very good here, as is former "Third Rock" star French Stewart. What happens is well-staged and jaw-dropping, and we're left more than a little breathless.

Then comes the big climax in the police station, and I mean that in more ways than one. All the suspicions are out in the open and the truth is revealed at last in a twist that I found satisfyingly twisted even though I pretty much saw it coming. And even then, it just keeps getting twistier. And weirder. And sicker. It's fun to watch the lead actors performing this over-the-top material so well and giving it all they've got. Best of all are Bill Pullman, who gives one of his most interesting performances here as the hangdog FBI agent in the rumpled black suit, and Julia Ormond, who's even better as his partner. I should also mention longtime fan fave Michael Ironside, who gets to play a good guy (or does he?)

Jennifer Lynch proves that she can not only write a scintillating screenplay (with co-writer Kent Harper), but she can also direct it with imagination and style. There's an effective contrast between the claustrophobic station scenes and the expansive highway sequences, which feature some neat tracking shots and take full advantage of those flat, empty Saskatchewan vistas. Lynch also has a knack for working with actors and getting just what she wants out of them while encouraging them to make their own creative contributions.

The DVD on Magnolia's "Magnet" label is 2.35:1 widescreen with 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital sound. Bonuses include the making-of featurettes "Surveillance: The Watched are Watching" and "HDNet: A Look at Surveillance." There are also deleted scenes (with commentary), an alternate ending which I'm glad wasn't used even though it's interesting to watch, and a commentary featuring Lynch and castmembers Mac Miller and Charlie Newmark. Spanish subtitles are available.

Jen Lynch doesn't want to imitate her dad--at one point she changed the ending when it occurred to her that she was making a David Lynch movie--and she doesn't have to. She has a distinctive style, and SURVEILLANCE stands on its own as a story that bends reality in all sorts of intriguing ways without becoming self-consciously unreal.

SURVEILLANCE -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE LAST CIRCUS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/12/11

 

You don't watch Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia's THE LAST CIRCUS (2010) as much as you're propelled through it.  Frenetic, intensely melodramatic, and way off-the-wall, it's like a Jackson Pollock painting with broad splashes of humor, tragedy, beauty, and violence. 

After a cool main titles montage, we find ourselves in a circus in Spain circa 1937.  The clowns' performance is interrupted by militia pressing men into service to fight in the Spanish Civil War.  Next thing we know, there's a clown in drag wading into a platoon of National soldiers with a machete, in the midst of a spectacular battle in the streets.  Already we know that this isn't going to be your average movie.

His son, Javier, grows up to be a sad clown in a circus dominated by Sergio (Antonio de la Torre), a "happy" clown who is the children's favorite despite his savagely violent nature.  Javier (Carlos Areces) falls in love with Sergio's gorgeous acrobat girlfriend Natalia (Carolina Bang), who is fond of Javier but perversely excited by Sergio's abuse.  When the clowns finally clash, all hell breaks loose.

A visual feast, THE LAST CIRCUS takes us on a dizzying tour of baroque circuses, blazing battles, and off-kilter urban tableaux where mad clowns with machine guns terrorize the citizenry.  Javier's attack on Sergio leaves him with a face that would make the Joker wince--thus ending his career performing for children--while the increasingly psychotic Javier's gleeful self-mutilation gives him a grotesque, permanent clown face meant to strike fear as he goes on a ramapage of revenge against the world. 

Areces, a portly, plain-looking actor, deftly takes his character to this drastic stage after first appearing as a normal and deceptively meek-looking man gradually driven to violence to protect his Natalia.  After his attack on Sergio, he becomes a wild man in the forest and ends up actually biting an elderly General Franco in one of the film's most weirdly comical moments, after which he transforms himself into the homicidal clown monster. 

As Sergio, de la Torre gives a raw performance that takes on added richness once his facial disfigurement makes his character even more volatile and unpredictable.  Most exhilarating for me, however, is the statuesque Carolina Bang as Natalia.  Whether performing her circus acrobatic act, dancing in a Kojak-themed nightclub in front of a giant portrait of Telly Savalas, or making love with passionate abandon to her beastly boyfriend Sergio, she's utterly captivating.  You can't blame Javier for being obsessed with her to the point of having heated delusions in which she appears as a shimmering religious icon.

The film is technically dazzling from the direction and photography all the way to a heart-pounding score by Roque Baños.  The great SPFX include lots of well-done CGI and green screen culminating in a thrilling cliffhanger climax atop a towering monument with Javier and Sergio doing battle over their mutual love Natalia.  The sequence owes quite a bit to films such as THE CROW, BATMAN, and a few others that may come to mind while watching it, with one sweeping camera move after another producing vertigo-inducing thrills as the story builds to its peak. 

The DVD from Magnolia's Magnet label is in 2.35:1 widescreen with English and Spanish 5.1 soundtracks.  Subtitles are in English.  Extras consist of international and U.S. trailers and the featurettes "Making of The Last Circus", "Behind the Scenes Segments", and "Visual Effects."  The latter reveals an extent of green-screen usage throughout the film that I was unaware of while watching it. 

One of the most welcome surprises of my recent viewing experience, THE LAST CIRCUS is a mad rush through a thoroughly skewed adventure bursting with goodies for the eyes and the mind.  You may not like it as much as I did, but I can't imagine anyone being bored by it.

THE LAST CIRCUS -- DVD Review by Porfle

SAINT BERNARD -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 5/16/19

 

Okay, who else thought this was going to be about a big monster dog like "Cujo"?  Me too, but SAINT BERNARD (Severin Films, 2013) is so much more than that, thank goodness. The first thing we see, for example, is a raw chicken on the verge of a parachute jump from an airplane.  Things just get way weirder from there.

For those of you who have always wished for a sequel to ERASERHEAD, this may be as close as you'll ever get.  In that film, however, it's the rest of the world--the real world, so to speak--that's bizarre and surreal, and the hero, Henry, tries to make sense of it. 

Here, Bernard lives in what we know as the everyday world, but can only perceive it all through his own full-blown insanity. So his attempts to find a place in the real world and live a "normal" life become nothing more than a series of incredibly bizarre waking nightmares. (These are just my interpretations, mind you--yours may be completely different.)

We first meet him, in the only part of the movie where he actually looks happy, as a young boy who wants more than anything to be an orchestra conductor.  In the first surreal segment, which I can only deduce is a figment of Bernard's unbridled imagination, we see a wood carver fashioning a baton for the boy from a large chunk of wood, which he then wields as confidently as baseball ace Roy Hobbs swinging his "Wonderboy" bat in THE NATURAL.

Bernard has the gift of discerning musical patterns from things in everyday life--clocks ticking, water dripping--but has trouble making such orderly sense of life itself.  His grown-up self, played by Jason Dugre (SKINNED DEEP) will be no less confused, and we'll discover that he has become progressively removed from what we would consider "sanity."

This manifests itself in what must be some of the most bizarre, surreal imagery ever created for a motion picture.  Most of it springs from the fertile and clearly fervid mind of writer-producer-director Gabriel Bartalos, whose special effects expertise has graced many films such as DARKMAN, UNDERWORLD, and FROM BEYOND.  His production designer also deserves much credit for helping to create some of the most freakishly strange environments and props imaginable.

Bernard's descent into madder madness is also represented by the stark white tuxedo that he always wears. It starts out clean and pure, like Bernard's innocent, unsullied nature, and then gets progressively soiled and stained as he is forced to interact with reality on both an intellectual and tactile level.

The whole thing really gets underway when Bernard attempts a concert performance which is on a grand scale in his mind, but in actuality is nothing more than him making an ass of himself in front of a few family and friends in a near-empty concert hall. This is where we still see traces of the real world outside of Bernard's twisted perception, and how it is made utterly strange by the deep-seated insanity which has overtaken him.

At one point midway through I realized that I was looking for a story and not finding it. But in the middle of this jumble of grotesque, senseless imagery, there was a kind of story, which was the story of Bernard looking for a story in his life and not finding it.  As an aspiring musical conductor he looks for the tick-tock beat in everything which he can control and cajole with his "Wonderboy" baton.  But it is nowhere to be found.

Just like in most nightmares, nothing makes sense and that's how they are designed to torment us.  Bernard strives for stability and resolution, and either he is too insane to find such things or the world around him is too insane to offer them. The more he searches, the crazier the nightmare becomes.

Each person Bernard meets, or thinks he meets, is more incomprehensible than the last, as are the situations surrounding them.  Trying to seek help at a police station involves climbing through a trap door into a hallway that's ankle-deep in broken bottles and trying to communicate with a monstrous troll referred to as "Chief." 

Meeting his potential love interest, Miss Roadkill (Katy Sullivan), in an alleyway goes from an act of icky sexual aggression on the part of this whacked-out street harpy to sudden, extreme horror when a truck runs over her legs and turns them to bloody stumps.  The driver, who actually has no legs himself, then berates her for spoiling his driving record while hopping around emptying a large bag of table salt over her gaping wounds.

Oh, and I left out the part about the clumps of barbershop hair that have gathered and entwined themselves into stick figures stalking the streets, which for some reason come to Bernard's aid.  The disembodied head of a St. Bernard dog figures into all of this as well, which, in one amusing scene with Andy Kaufman's pal Bob Zmuda as a money-grabbing priest, sort of becomes a symbol of religious faith if one wishes to mentally pursue such things.

I won't even go into the finale--my mind is still trying to process it. It does involve Bernard's weird Uncle Jack, and a creature that's the pinnacle of the film's makeup and practical effects artistry.  One final mention of the story's continual references to wood and water. And look for Warwick Davis atop a huge pile of--you guessed it--wood.

I spent the entire running time either trying to make sense of it all, or trying to make sense of the fact that none of it made any sense. Sometimes I labored to find the symbolism in what I was seeing--I know it was there, some of the time anyway--and sometimes I just sat back and let the weirdness overtake me. Either way, I was totally engaged with SAINT BERNARD from start to finish, and felt a little more crazy and a little more sane for having watched it.


Buy it at Severin Films

Special Features:
    The Making of Saint Bernard
    Trailer

SAINT BERNARD -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle